Data servers host critical production data in their storage systems. The storage systems are usually required to provide a level of data availability and service availability. Data and service are usually required to be resilient to a variety of failures, which could range from media failures to data center failures. Typically this requirement is addressed in part by a range of data protection schemes that may include tape-based backup of all or some of the production data.
In addition there is typically a need for other servers to concurrently access this same critical production data. These applications include data protection applications, site replication applications, search applications, discovery applications, analysis applications, and monitoring and supervision applications. This need has been addressed by a range of data management schemes, including setting up a specialized analysis server with a replica of the critical production data. Typical data protection and management schemes have some well known limitations. For example, in some cases, direct access to the enterprise server could result in instability and performance load on the enterprise servers. Other limitations are related to the serial and offline nature of traditional tape storage, which makes access to backed-up data time-consuming and inefficient.
While it is theoretically possible to transfer the entire source data on the Production System to the Management System, this is not efficient in practice. Instead, conventional systems and methods create an entire baseline copy of the source data on the Management System, followed by the periodic, or continuous, changes to the data that are occurring on the Production System, and transfer the baseline copy and the changes to the Management System. These changes are then applied to the copy of the data on the Management System, thereby bringing it up-to-date. While some database management systems provide these intrinsic capabilities that are known as “Log Shipping”, log shipping is not available in other databases like non-relational databases or databases of file system data.